On May 15, 2002, the Institute of Asian and African Countries at Moscow State University and the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences held a joint conference (the Third Pavlov Readings) "The Foreign East: Questions of Economic History in Political Economy Classics" (organizers: M. S. Meyer and A.m. Petrov). The conference was prepared within the framework of the research project RGNF 00-01-00432a - "East: social transformation in the parameters of economic history".

Opening the meeting, ISAA Director M. S. Meyer said that the enthusiasm of many researchers for modern economic problems in isolation from the knowledge of the East accumulated in political economy is felt more and more strongly every year, and the conference being held, as well as the planned collection of articles on its results, should fill this gap.

The topic itself created a wide field for discussion, because the concept of "political economy classics" includes not only the British classical school, but also the works of mercantilists and physiocrats, the so-called "vulgar" political economy, and the works of M. Weber and J.-M. Keynes.

What kind of information on the economic history of the East can a modern researcher draw from this literature? Eastern issues raised in the writings of political economists of the XVII-early XX centuries-what is it? A tribute to fashion, a game of the mind, a demonstration of the authors ' well-readness (actually hiding the superficiality of knowledge of the Eastern economic texture), or, on the contrary, the fruit of serious reflections of outstanding European scientists based on reliable information? What are their ideas that remain relevant for a researcher studying historical and economic issues? The conference participants tried to answer these questions.

A. M. Petrov (Institute of Political Economy of the Russian Academy of Sciences) in his report "Foreign East: questions of economic history in political economy classics (introduction to the topic)", setting the general tone of speeches, noted that young researchers ' taste for reading political economy literature is discouraged already on the student bench, imposing only general schemes of reasoning of the authors and creating the feeling that these books are incredibly boring and hopelessly outdated. In fact, essays on political economy were usually written in clear, lucid language, since they were often aimed at the practical reader: a merchant, a colonial official.

As for the existing skepticism in Russian Oriental studies about the degree of awareness of European political economists about the East (sometimes the question is raised: "How did they know that?"), then it is illegal. Many of these scholars were professionally engaged in the Orient and were much more knowledgeable about it than some of their Orientalist contemporaries. For example, Thomas Maine (1571-1641), the head of the mercantilist school, was one of the founders of the British East India Company and served on its board. He managed to create a statistical picture of European-Asian trade at the end of the XVI-beginning of the XVII century. John McCulloch (1789-1864) worked in applied economics and created the "Commercial Dictionary" (1832, then reprinted several times) - a practical guide for merchants with generalized information about trade, commodity exchange, and other issues.

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structure of exports and imports of eastern countries. He recorded data not only on English or European trade with the East, but also on inter-Asian trade.

The study of population problems is only a small part of T. R. Malthus ' work. (Further, the speaker presented the abstract of T. I. Kalyanova's report sent to the conference - "Malthus and the East India College"). From 1805 to 1834, Malthus was Professor of Political Economy and History at the East India College, Highleybury. Could he give lectures to students who were leaving for India after graduation about something that didn't really exist? (This was written about when it came to Malthus ' views on Eastern despotism and the problem of private property in the East.) The question is, of course, rhetorical. Malthus developed a training program for officials that even included studying the culture of communication in the East. His 29 years at the college show that Malthus ' ideas were tested in practice. After Malthus ' death, Richard Jones took his place in the department and taught from 1835 to 1855. Based on the data of R. Jones and F. Bernier, K. Marx created the concept of the Asian mode of production. Jones has an unpublished work on the tax system in British India that was published in Russia.

James Mill wrote a History of British India (1817) and served on the board of the East India Company from 1819 to 1836. Together with his son, John Stuart Mill, he worked in the department that studied incoming correspondence from the field. J.-M. Keynes worked in the India Office in 1906-1908. In 1913-1914. He was a member of the Government's Finance and Money Commission of India, and was commissioned by the Government to draft proposals for the establishment of the central bank of India.

To suspect all these outstanding British scientists of ignorance or a desire not to study reality, but to subordinate it to artificially created schemes, is at least not serious.

If we talk about the French school of physiocrats, then when writing the work "Chinese Despotism" (so far only Chapter VIII has been translated into Russian, which does not give a clear idea of the original), F. Quesnay carefully studied the works about China by participants of European spiritual missions and other materials.

The German school of political economy (F. List, W. Sombart, M. Weber) was based on a powerful tradition of philosophical thought, so here we need information at the level of generalizations.

The speaker also demonstrated how changing the angle of consideration of even well-known works, where "oriental motifs" are muted and factual material about the East is scarce, can give the most unexpected result. For example, in A. Smith's "Research on the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations", at first glance, there is no criticism of Eastern despotism. However, if we know the context of Smith's statement about the physiocrats - " French authors of great learning and wit "(they idealized the" enlightened despotism " of China), we can understand Smith's critique of Eastern despotism through his evidence for the failure of physiocratic theory. The Scottish thinker's" Theory of Moral Feelings " reveals the motivation of human behavior in European society, which is fundamentally different from the logic of behavior within the framework of Eastern despotic structures.

And the very view of political economists on the realities of Eastern societies provides interesting material for further reflection on their nature. For example, J.-S. Mill, noting that China in the mid-nineteenth century had a very high rate of loan interest (12%; in practice, it fluctuated between 18 and 36%), came to the conclusion: this fact "...This means that the degree of effective accumulation is much lower [compared to Europe - S. S.] - in other words, that the Chinese value the future in comparison with the present much less than most European peoples."*

The discussion of the conference's issues was continued with concrete examples. M. S. Meyer in his report "Data on European-Asian trade in T. Maine's treatise "Reasoning on English trade with the East Indies"" showed what statistics this work contains (1621). In particular, T. Meng gives data on the funds spent annually by European merchants on the purchase of spices, indigo and raw Persian silk coming there from India in Aleppo. This amount was about 1465 thousand pounds. In the event of-

* Mill J. S. Osnovy politicheskoi ekonomiki [Fundamentals of Political Economy], Moscow, 1980, vol. 1, pp. 298-299.

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However, if these goods were exported directly from India, the expenditure of Europeans would presumably amount to about 511 thousand pounds. This was followed by the apology of the East India Company: thanks to its activities, the "community of Christian peoples" would deprive its enemy, the Ottoman Empire, of significant profits.

Further, the statistics become even more interesting. A huge amount of money was spent by Europeans on goods coming from the Levant. France annually spent on trade from Marseille to Aleppo and Alexandria an amount (in Spanish silver reals and dollars - i.e. piastres) equivalent to at least 500 thousand pounds sterling, Venice - about 100 thousand, Messina left about 25 thousand, Holland spent about 50 thousand. Virtually no country exported goods to the East, so Europeans were forced to pay in silver and gold. Venice is a special case. It is a model for England, since it partially compensates for its purchases in the East due to the developed structure of trade relations with the whole of Europe by supplying European goods.

Gold and silver received from Europeans. The Ottoman Empire paid with Persia for raw silk (an amount equivalent to about 500 thousand pounds sterling was spent annually) and with India - for spices, tobacco, sugar, rice and other goods (about 600 thousand). Accordingly, there was a call to intercept this rich trade and directly deliver goods to Europe by sea.

T. Meng cited data that if earlier, when purchasing spices and indigo from the Ottoman Empire, the British spent 183.5 thousand pounds annually, then thanks to the activities of the East India Company, about 108 thousand pounds were spent on purchasing the same amount of goods directly in India. In the development of trade in English goods, Maine saw a way to reduce the deficit in trade with the East.

The quantitative data contained in Meng's treatise can be used in the development of problems of commodity-money relations in the Ottoman Empire and the study of the problem of price revolution.

Little-known statistical information for Russian Orientalists was also presented in the report of G. K. Shirokov (Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences) "Keynes and India". Keynes ' early and rarely used paper, Money Circulation and Finance in India (1913), served as a starting point for thinking. In order to explain the meaning of the proposals of the English economist, the speaker described what the monetary system of India was like at the beginning of the XX century. At that time, India had a sterling - motto standard. The main medium of circulation was the silver rupee. At the same time, the India Office exchanged rupees for pounds sterling at the established exchange rate (15 rupees for 1 pound sterling). Only after performing this operation, an Indian entrepreneur could exchange pounds for foreign currency. In addition, the India Office in England issued pound cheques. In India, they were sold for Rs. Using these securities, Indian exporters carried out foreign economic operations. The India Office also held a significant part of the reserves in the UK to ensure monetary circulation, placing a certain share in British securities.

India itself was divided into 7 districts in 1910. Each of them had the right to issue paper money that was used only in the territory of this district (this money was exchanged at railway ticket offices). A fundamentally important feature of monetary circulation in the country was the dominant role of the state. It was partly determined by the traditions inherited from the East India Company, and partly by the need to transfer" home charges " (these were pensions of retired military personnel, officials, amounts for repayment of interest on loans, etc.) to Great Britain (according to Keynes, at the end of the XIX - beginning of the XX century. annually this amount reached 18-22 the total domestic money circulation of India in 1904/1905 was 26 million pounds sterling).

From the point of view of G. K. Shirokov, Keynes ' views are close to those of a certain group of British colonial officials. These were graduates of, for example, Cambridge or East India College, who, gradually moving up the career ladder, as a rule, lived in India until retirement and therefore (unlike the top of the colonial administration-titled British aristocrats) In one way or another, they identified with India and its interests.

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Keynes proposes a whole series of reforms: the establishment of a gold standard instead of the sterling-motto one, the organization of a central bank, the transfer of gold reserves to ensure the circulation of money from Britain to India (reserves to ensure the gold standard should have been stored in England). At the same time, Keynes notes, the Indian monetary system is an unusually interconnected phenomenon, and the reform of any of its components can affect all the others in unpredictable ways. That is, the position of the scientist-economist was somewhat contradictory.

Keynes recommended the introduction of a cheap gold standard with the circulation of paper money exchanged for gold within the country, but with payment for foreign economic transactions in gold. Keynes ' idea, which was economically rational, was politically unprofitable for Great Britain, since in this case the need to exchange rupees for pounds sterling was eliminated, and this would have provided Indian entrepreneurs with the opportunity for foreign economic contacts without the mediation of England.

The proposal to create a central bank provided for reducing the role of the state in the monetary system. In addition, this proposal affected the vital interests of the very official environment, since its implementation in practice would make the staff of local treasuries that issued paper money unnecessary. According to the rules of the Indian Civil Service, officials were constantly transferred from one place of service to another, while the activities of the central bank assumed the presence of professional financiers. It was necessary to attract new people. All this would have disrupted the normal course of life of the colonial administration. As a result, the central reserve bank was established much later , in 1934.

Finally, if gold reserves were transferred to India, it would be extremely difficult to invest them profitably in Indian securities. Therefore, the recommendations made by Keynes were not supported by the British government.

S. V. Soplenkov's report "Eastern historical and economic texture in Russian economic thought of the XVIII-first half of the XIX century"was of a source study nature. Political economy was still developing in Russia during this period, so we were talking about the economic literature as a whole. The report began with a story about translated literature, as it was used by domestic authors as a model when writing original works. In Russia, for example, the Extract of Savary's Lexicon (an abridged translation of Savary de Brulon's Universal Commercial Dictionary; original edition - 1723, Russian edition - 1747) and J.-P. Ricard's Torg Amsterdam (original edition - 1723, Russian edition - 1762-1763)were published. . These were original encyclopedias of world trade at the end of the XVII-beginning of the XVIII century, which also contained information about European-Asian economic relations (with prices for basic goods, references to monetary systems and systems of weights and measures of various countries). The works of Savary and Ricard "fit" Russia into the system of world trade relations, and were carefully studied by domestic authors who were looking for an answer to the question of how Russia should conduct trade with the East.

Information about the Russian-Asian trade was contained in the works of G.-F. Miller, P. I. Rychkov, P.-S. Pallas, S.-G. Gmelin and others. As a rule, the order of production of trade, the main goods were described, prices for them or the proportions of exchange were indicated. Many authors have suggested the prospects for the development of transit land trade between Europe and the East through Russia.

The speaker drew attention to the fact that when working with the most voluminous economic work of the XVIII century - the work of M. D. Chulkov " Historical description of Russian Commerce. .. "(sometimes perceived as a completely original author's work) a certain amount of accuracy is required on the part of the researcher. The fact is that significant blocks of information about China, Persia, and the Ottoman Empire were borrowed by Chulkov from the Savariev Lexicon Extract, and articles and fragments from the works of Miller, Rychkov, F. I. Soymonov, and other authors devoted to Russian-Asian trade were included by Chulkov in the text of his work, often without specifying the original authorship (more on this already source scientists wrote, in particular, E. A. Bondareva).

Due to the accumulation of information about trade with the East in the last decades of the XVIII century, a number of works - "Letter on Chinese Trade" by A. N. Radishchev (1792), the article "Orenburg" in the New and Complete Geographical Dictionary edited by L. M. Maksimovich..., published by N. I. Novikov in 1788 - made a transition to a new level of understanding of the problems of Russian-Asian trade. It is becoming clear that the "European sea trade" with Asian-

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It is much more cost-effective than the Russian land route, so there are no prospects for Russia to become a transit route for goods between Europe and the East. (However, in the 19th century, the discussion of this problem began anew, with the same final results by the 1850s.)

Among the works of the first half of the XIX century, which are of practical importance for a modern researcher, the speaker highlighted the "Comparative tables of foreign weights, measures, real and exchange rate coins in relation and comparison to the St. Petersburg Stock Exchange" published in 1807 by F. Borel. The tables contained information about those eastern countries and cities where Europeans traded. Based on European data, Borel converted eastern monetary units into Russian silver and assignation rubles at the exchange rate of 1807. This information makes it much easier to work with economic data from the early 19th century.

In the political economy literature (Zh.-Zh. Rousseau, I.-G.-G. Yusty, and others) contained little factual information about the East. The Eastern economic model was being interpreted, and two images were constantly present in the discussion: an idealized China and the Ottoman Empire as a negative example. Smith's ideas (the philosophical side of his teaching) were popularized by S.E. Desnitsky, a professor of law at Moscow State University.

Among the works of the XIX century, the "Course of Political Economy" by A. K. Storch (1815) stands out. Storch drew parallels between feudal Russia and despotic eastern states, agreed with Smith that the Chinese economy was in a state of stagnation, and used the scheme of historical development borrowed from Smith (with some clarifications), illustrating it with examples from the life of Eastern peoples. Storch's work, which was taught by the future Emperor Nicholas Pavlovich, caused a resonance among European economists, and was later used by Karl Marx.

In general, in Russia of the XVIII-first half of the XIX century, there was a process of accumulation of information about the East, and a real vision of the East was being formed in Russian economic thought.

V. G. Rastiannikov's report "Indian inclusions in M. Weber's theory" developed the topic of political economy as a philosophical understanding of economics. In contrast to the previous presentations, it was not so much about India-related specifics in Weber's works. V. G. Rastiannikov's approach to the presentation of the material was somewhat broader, especially since the level of Weber's knowledge about India has long been surpassed by modern science, since, for example, he studied the system of Indian land ownership only from the research of B.-G. Boden-Powell (V. N. Badin-Powell). Based on Weber's classic works "Protestant Ethics and the Spirit of Capitalism" (1905) and "History of the Economy" (1920), the speaker tried to answer the following questions:: What does Weber's theory give researchers to interpret the processes taking place in the modern East? What are the features of the "Eastern" model of capitalism? How can we explain the genesis of capitalism in the East if, according to the fundamental conclusion of Weber's theory, capitalism could only have originated in Western Europe?

Therefore, in the report it became necessary to appeal to the totality of Weber's views in order to reach an understanding of the Eastern model of development through the opposition of European capitalism described by Weber to the East. V. G. Rastyannikov identified two main principles of Weber in understanding economic processes. First, Weber, in contrast to Marx, treats the subjective factor as a factor of the most powerful (or even determining) influence on the economic process. Second, Weber claims that his theory is universal, including Europe, Asia, and fragmentary North America in the field of research.

Compared to Marx, Weber introduces new concepts to the understanding of capitalism. For example, "adventurist capitalism", whose features are akin to Marx's "initial accumulation", but for Weber this is not a stage of development of capitalism, but a special socio-economic form. The characteristic of "rational capitalism" becomes fundamentally important in Weber's theory. Its features: separation of the enterprise from the "household"; within the framework of an enterprise created on the basis of "fixed capital", "free labor" is used, focused on the "commodity market"; correlation of costs and income, enterprise management based on "formal rules" , etc. Such capitalism is based on the principles of "profitability". The psychological makeup of people formed in Western Europe ("Protestant ethics") became the unique ground on which capitalism emerged, later spreading to other countries and continents.

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According to Weber, there is also "traditionalist capitalism." There are signs of capitalist relations here, but it is not a genuine, "rational" capitalism. Bearer of "traditionalist capitalism" - for example, a merchant-buyer, acting on the basis of traditional methods. If in the conditions of "rational capitalism" an employee is focused on intensive work and receiving high wages (the behavioral stereotype is "eating well"), then in "traditionalist capitalism" the employee is more concerned with the burden of work (the behavioral stereotype is "sleeping well").

According to V. G. Rastiannikov, Weber's theory provides much for understanding why capitalism in India (and in a number of other Eastern countries) has an introduced character, why it could not have emerged here on its own basis, and only as it was "planted" (at first an enclave) from the outside, it gradually began to spread in breadth. Hinduism reflects the division of labor that existed in ancient times, and strongly opposes the capitalist system of division of labor. Weber noted that India's social background is deeply hostile to "rational capitalism," and that mutual caste exclusion prevents the "introduction of the factory system." Based on the data of modern research (V. I. Pavlov), V. G. Rastiannikov noted that the tradition of India has formed a special type of consumption: with the growth of income (surplus product), representatives of the ruling class increased the numerical composition of their families, eating up this income (surplus product). There is no need to talk about accumulation here. (Let us recall the above conclusion of J. S. Mill on China. The coincidence of the views of the British political economist and modern researchers on this issue shows that Mill's assessment was not emotional, but thoughtful, scientific in nature).

Speaking about the importance of using Weber's theory for understanding socio-economic processes in transition economies, the speaker gave an example of modern Russia, where, to use Weber's terminology, the trends of "adventurist capitalism" clearly hinder the development of elements of"rational capitalism".

When discussing the report of V. G. Rastiannikov, L. B. Alaev (Institute of Economics of the Russian Academy of Sciences) expressed the opinion that the economic development of the West and the East can be understood on the basis of common historical patterns. For example, a psychology typologically similar to Protestant ethics can be traced to the Bhakti movement or to the modern Indian bourgeoisie with its spirit of rational business management.

A. G. Volodin (ISAA at Moscow State University) drew attention to the role of Buddhism in the formation of such a psychological structure in a number of Eastern countries (this idea was also mentioned in the report), with the reservation that the dynamics of capitalism are determined not by Buddhism or Protestantism, but by deep socio - economic processes. He also noted the need for practical use of the information provided by the speakers and the expansion of historical and economic topics in the training of orientalists.

In his closing remarks, M. S. Meyer emphasized that the conference reports contained new data, practically unknown to Russian Orientalists, which make us take a fresh look at a number of problems of the economic history of the East. At least one of the questions raised at the beginning of the conference is now taking on a rhetorical tone. It is obvious that the Eastern theme in political economy is not a game of an idle European mind, fascinated by the exoticism of distant countries. Political economy classics have brought us unique historical and economic information that is fundamentally important for a modern researcher.

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